Some Exciting News! Imminent Arrival of a New Kitty!

---but not one to make Beatrice and Phoebe jealous!!

For some time now I’ve been getting increasingly fed up with my Cricut. First of all, I was really hacked off over the court case between Provocraft (the manufacturer of the Cricut cutting machine) and the designers of the excellent software Make the Cut (and subsequently, I believe, SCAL) which meant you could no longer design your own cut files and cut them with this machine. I was OK because I had the old firmware, but anyone updating the firmware, or buying a new machine, would be stuck with the very expensive Cricut cartridges only, and no possibility of cutting their own designs.

That’s absolutely fine for a lot of people who are more than happy to cut other people’s designs, and more power to them – at least they can cut different shapes and continue to make their cards and other projects, but for many of us, that is far from being enough. I’ve had a taste of designing my own stuff and wouldn’t want to give that up.

Also, as usual with any of my technology, I push it to the limits and make huge demands on it! I have been finding that cutting simple shapes is no longer enough for me. I want to be able to cut small and intricate pieces, and more complex designs and projects, and quite honestly, the Cricut is simply not up to the job. What brought it to a head was when I made the Christmas roses for my altered boxes – I used Penny Duncan’s lovely Christmas rose pattern, and on her superb instructional video, she showed how beautifully her Black Cat Lynx cutter had coped with the delicate centres of the flowers – not a single “spoke” was torn. I was really jealous of this! She’s been singing the praises of her wonderful new machine for a while now. When I attempted to cut these flower centres with the Cricut, less than half the spokes survived. I had to print Penny’s pdf file and cut them out by hand.

My hubby was in my ARTHaven the other day when I was cutting something, and he could see that the result was far from perfect. I’ve been moaning about it for a while in his hearing, but didn’t think he was that interested or even listening to my ramblings!

The lack of accuracy and cleanness of cut leaves much to be desired. For example, in the spring, when I made Wonderwoman’s mother’s 70th birthday card, when I cut the window for the box lid, I cut a second window in the box lid lining so that I could sandwich a sheet of acetate between the two layers, and the cut was “out” by about 1/8 inch when I came to align the layers. I had to trim the aperture in the lining, and cover the inside edge with a narrow gold peel-off strip, which actually finished it off nicely, but that wasn’t the point!!

Another example. I designed an svg file of a “bracket” style frame a while back, and used this to embellish the box I made a couple of days ago for my mum’s Christmas present, cutting it in the silver card.

Superficially I suppose it’s OK, but examine it closely and the inaccuracy of the Cricut cut is revealed.

The two paths of the cut file for the frame have moved out of alignment during the cut, making the frame slightly asymmetrical. Also the cut itself is not quite clean, having a ragged edge, and this despite having a new blade in the machine.

I brought the finished box downstairs and showed my hubby, and pointed these deficiencies out to him. Despite my thinking he hadn’t been that interested, he’d obviously taken on board what I’d been saying over the past few months, because he said, “I think you should just go ahead and get that new machine.” I couldn’t believe my ears! Music to them, in fact. I felt I now had “permission” to go ahead and invest in a new machine that I knew would do what I wanted.

When Penny got her Lynx I was very impressed indeed, but looking at the details, I decided it was worth getting the higher spec machine, the Cougar, which will cut much thicker material than the Lynx. For a long time I’ve wanted to be able to cut shapes from mounting board (mat board) which is far too thick for the Cricut, and quite impossible to cut anything complicated by hand. I thought I would eventually get this machine, but when my hubby said that, and with the frustration I’ve been feeling of late, I decided to bite the bullet and go for it!!

A few days ago I signed up for the UK Black Cat forum and had a browse around, and read what people on there, and elsewhere on the net, have been saying about the machine and its capabilities. Having searched extensively, I have to agree with one person who said they hadn’t been able to find a single negative review of this machine anywhere online. It’s beautifully engineered, heavy, sturdily built to enable it to cut with the pressure needed, functional, metal not plastic, built to last and will do what I require it to do. It is not tied to any particular software or cartridges – in fact it was designed with people like us in mind, who want to do our own thing and do it well, without any hassle.

So… yesterday afternoon I put down a deposit on a Black Cat Cougar cutting machine! The model I want is out of stock at the moment, and apparently the new machines will be arriving later this month, and they are already selling fast, so it was suggested that I reserve one with a deposit.

If I had known then what I know now, I would not have bought the Cricut, but gone straight for the Cougar. However, I didn’t know, and at the time the Cricut seemed a big enough investment. As an entry level machine it was very good, particularly as I was still able to cut my own designs with it, but since then I feel I have moved on and require something more sophisticated. I am hoping to be able to sell the Cricut; it has an embossing kit with it (hardly used) and a couple of cartridges (not used, apart from the fact you have to have a cartridge in the machine in order to make it work at all).

I’ll keep you posted about when my new kitty arrives! I’m very excited about it! Meantime, it’s back to the forum, and Youtube, to learn as much as I can about it before it comes. It’s a sharp learning curve and not for the faint hearted but it will be well worth the effort, to have such a superb tool at my fingertips.

Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!! GRRRRRR. Big FIERCE kitty! Cut that out!! Lol!

Book-Style Birthday Cards

As you know, I’ve been extremely busy with projects recently, trying to keep up with birthdays and other special occasions for family and friends. I’ve finally completed the book-style card for my home help Wonderwoman’s mum’s 70th birthday.

You may remember a while back my posting the flowers that I made for this card – I then had to start on my mum’s 90th birthday card because the deadline for that was sooner. Here are the pictures of the flowers again:

These roses were made from Penny Duncan’s design – you can find her blog in my blog list.

These flowers were made from spare rose parts that I cut by mistake, which explains why some have holes in the centre and some do not.

They were decorated with an embossing pen and gold heat embossing. In use on the card, the ones with holes now have brads inserted, and all the centres have been decorated with Stickles in gold and red.

Wonderwoman had asked me to design the card with a black and gold colour scheme with red accents as her mum has a bold, modern-style living room and she thought that if it co-ordinated, she might leave her card up for longer!

Also, unlike my mum’s card, where the “pages” of the book were fixed, she wanted the pages to be moveable, and have some photos of her and her mum on them.

Here is the finished card, in its box, which is also decorated with the flowers.

The following photos are details of the flowers on the lid of the box.

The frame for the photo on the box was made from gold mirror board using Spellbinders Nestabilities, cut and embossed using my Cuttlebug. I did the same for the frame on the card itself.

This is the book-style card on its stand, which is the same as the stand I made for my mum’s 90th birthday card, but this time cut from two layers of black card.

Wonderwoman composed the verse herself for her mum. The rose in the centre is attached to the bookmark ribbon and not to the actual card, because the pages of the book need to lift up without obstruction. The “70” is metal, embossed using my new embossing kit for the Cricut, which I have to say I’m not over-thrilled with – I probably need to tweak a few settings to get it better (thanks to Penny Duncan for her pointers in the right direction when I emailed her for help!) – I had to cut the numbers out by hand and cutting the centre of the “0” was far from easy. Practice makes perfect!! (Hopefully…)

Here are some details of the front of the card.

All the text on this card was done in Serif DrawPlus, mostly in Edwardian Script font, “text on a path” to create the illusion of the curvature of the pages. If the text was straight, it did not look right.

For this card, I created a new leaf trail, which is now on my Microsoft OneDrive and can be downloaded free in .svg format for use on cutting machines. Please see the note on the left-hand side of my blog for the link.

The pages lift up to reveal several photos underneath, which Wonderwoman brought me so that I could scan them. I used Serif CraftArtist to create layouts for them to co-ordinate with the card and to add a bit of glamour, while at the same time keeping them flat.

This final picture is a very precious one to Wonderwoman and her mum, because it shows Wonderwoman as a baby. When she gave me the photo, I wasn’t at all sure the quality was good enough, because this is the state it was in, with quite a bit of damage – creases, spots where the photo had disappeared, and a strip down one side which she told me had been Sellotape, and it was also mis-shapen where it had been cut with scissors at some point…

However, with my wonderful Serif PhotoPlus, I was able to remedy most of these faults, and I think you’ll agree the result is quite acceptable:

It’s such a sweet picture, and well worth the effort! Wonderwoman was absolutely thrilled when she saw it. I shall print it out for her as an enlargement, as the original is quite small.

I then decided to have some fun with the back of the card. Since this is a book-style card, I thought it would be good to make it look more like a book cover – when I did my mum’s card it was just flat, with some inking and a place for us to write our message for her. Here is what I’ve done for Wonderwoman:

Again, I’ve done the text on a path to give the illusion of a curve. All the background papers in this card were a Serif CraftArtist marbled grey background, and I inked the edges of them all with Black Soot Distress Ink.

I gave the “book” a “title” and a “first edition” notice with my name as publisher! The date is her mum’s actual birthday.

To make the spine, I curved the mid-section of the card around some dowel, and when I glued it onto the inside part, I filled it with Pinflair glue to make sure it wouldn’t get squashed flat. I hand-embossed it and painted it with gold Perfect Pearls. The outer edge, and that of the inside of the cover, were decorated in the same way. On the top left panel, I have left some space for Wonderwoman to sign her name. Here are some more detailed photos:

Finally, to compare, here is the other book-style card I made, for my mum’s 90th birthday.

A very different style!

So far I’ve managed to meet all my deadlines. Next job: birthday card for my hubby – I’m hoping to make him a mechanical card with a pop-up inside – as long as I can get it to work! Then a card for him for our Silver Wedding, and a present. After that I must think about a card for my dad’s birthday in mid-June, and then a card and present for our nephew’s wedding in August. After that, I shall hardly have time to draw breath before thinking about Christmas!!! (And I really wanted to have time this year to do some stuff just for me – some experimental stuff, decorating some storage boxes for my ARTHaven, decorating my new wheelchair, and also doing some more video-ing, as well as playing with my new melting pot which I haven’t even used yet. Ah well. Such is life.)

Completion of Vintage Book-Style Birthday Card

I have now finished my mum’s 90th birthday card. On the card itself, all that remained to be done was to secure all the embellishments with glue, and I added some wire to hold down the pearly flower stem that I used for the swallows to perch on, and to make the swallow’s feet I cut a black plastic-covered wire tag that had come around a cable, and poked it through some holes I’d made in the top layer of the card.

I would have preferred to have made the swallows out of embossed metal, but I am still waiting for my Cricut embossing kit and metal to arrive, so I had to make them out of mirror card instead, and it didn’t emboss terribly well. You can see a slight impression for the eyes and wings, and I hope it’s sufficient. I used a “Happy Birthday” peel-off sentiment – I don’t use these very often these days, but I needed something small, and I thought it would do fine for this project.

After this, I assembled the whole card, attaching the pages to the back piece with double sided tape down the “spine” of the book, and squirting a series of good thick blobs of Pinflair glue under the pages to keep them curved upwards.

When the card was finished, I started on the box. I designed a background sheet from the vintage papers I used for the card itself, layering the manuscript photos over a nice distressed endpaper from one of the ancient books from our church. The lid was no problem; I simply cut down the printed sheet of A4 to 10 1/4 in x 6 1/2 in, adding an extra 3/4 in all round for the sides, and scored all four sides at this 3/4 in mark to make the sides of the lid. I selected the centre page of the book-style card template cut file, and cut this from the middle of the lid piece. I cut a piece of acetate slightly larger than this aperture, and stuck it to the inside of the lid with double-sided tape. I cut a small notch in each corner of the lid, and assembled it with hot glue. I then cut a piece of white card the size of the inside of the lid and again cut the page-shaped aperture in it, and attached it inside the lid, covering the edges of the acetate.

The bottom of the box was a different proposition altogether. Making a straightforward box out of two sheets of A4, one for the lid and one for the base, wasn’t going to work for this project, because the finished card was too thick, and I had to make a deeper base. This proved to be quite a lengthy process and at the end, it was a bit too big, so I had to fiddle around with it to make it fit, but I think it’s OK now.

I cut the base bottom 10 1/4 in x 6 1/2 in from my printed card, as for the lid, and then cut it down a very small amount so that the lid would fit over it. Unfortunately I didn’t cut it down quite enough – when I make this again, I shall make sure I cut a bit more off.

For the long sides, from the printed card I cut 2 strips measuring 11 1/4 in long by 1 3/4 in deep. I scored at 1/2 in from each end, and 1/2 in along one long side to provide tabs for gluing the sides to the bottom of the box.

I did the same for the short sides, which measured 6 1/2 in x 1 3/4 in – in this case I only scored along the long edge at 1/2 in for a gluing tab, because the ends didn’t need tabs.

Before assembling the bottom of the box, I cut a small amount off the side pieces, but again, not enough, and it involved a lot of fiddling around to get it small enough for the lid to fit. Grrrr.

I applied double sided tape to both sides of the tabs on the long edges of the side pieces, and stuck the outside of these tabs to the inside of the box base, so that the tabs were inside the box. The final step was to cut another piece of my printed card, the size of the inside of the box, to line it; this was stuck down with the double sided tape on the upper sides of the tabs holding the sides to the base.

Clear as mud? I hope so…

After completing the structure of the box, it just remained to attach some more roses on the corners, and a few leaf trails (also from a Penny Duncan cut file – thanks Penny!). I stuck the leaf trails down with spray on photo mount, and the roses with hot glue. Here is the card in the box:

As this isn’t a traditional card that opens and stands up on its own, I made a stand for it. The design for this was inspired by a Chinese plate stand which folds flat when not in use, and is decorative as well as functional. I drew this in Serif DrawPlus, adapting the size and proportions to fit my particular card size, and drew one half of it, which I then copied and pasted, flipped the copy, aligned the two, joined them into one piece, and exported as an svg cut file. I cut two of these from a piece of light brown 12 x 12 cardstock, at right angles to each other to take advantage of the strength of the grain of the card going both ways, and glued them together with Pinflair Photo Glue after scoring them down the vertical centre line. When the glue was dry, I folded this stand in half, so that it can be stowed underneath the card in the box, ready for use when my mum wants to put it up.

This is my first book-style card and it’s been a lot of fun to make (apart from the box which was a bit of a pain!) I have enjoyed creating my own digital backgrounds and printing them out – it’s an awful lot more fun than just using bought patterned paper, which you probably wouldn’t have in the right design anyway, and you can design it to fit the size and shape of the project too.

Here is a picture of the finished card on its stand, hopefully destined to grace my parents’ mantelpiece for a while!

I need to get going on Wonderwoman’s mum’s card, but we’ve got Mothering Sunday before that, so I have to make my mum another card! I haven’t yet quite decided what to do, but it will be a less elaborate affair, but still striking, I hope.

Book-Style Birthday Card–Vintage

Having revamped my book-style card template, I have started to create the cards. My mum’s card will have an aged, vintage feel. I have used some of the images from the ancient manuscript book which I posted about a few weeks ago, making a montage of images so that there was a distressed edge either side, and not exactly repeated, to give a more realistic look. I started with the distressed endpapers, and then added some of the manuscript text, using the mesh warp tool in Serif PhotoPlus to give the impression that the lines of text were following the curve of the page. I increased the contrast and blended it into the background using the Soft Light blending mode.

This is the centre (uppermost) page. There will be a ribbon bookmark down the centre fold, and it will be embellished with sentiments and some of the roses I have created.

The pages which lie behind this one were created in the same way, but to save time, I simply copied the completed image of the top page and flipped it vertically and/or horizontally and stretched it a bit so that the distressed edges did not look the same. It didn’t matter how the text looked (upside down and curving the wrong way) because it will all be covered by the top page. As it is being covered, there was no point in printing the whole of the centre and wasting ink, so I have erased the central part. This is the central page.

After I had created these two pages, I went into Serif CraftArtist Professional, my digital scrapbooking software, and created a mock-up of how the pages will look when printed, cut out and assembled.

I have now printed these pieces on a nice substantial white A4 cardstock, and I shall ink the edges with distress ink to cover up any bits of upside down text on the underlying pages, and also to darken it down a bit. The photos don’t really show the true colour; it was hard to get the colour balance just right because my first attempts at printing came out different from how they appeared on the screen, and the final result is a bit too pink, so I may be able to tone this down with some distress inks.

The pages will be gently curved using a rolling pin, and glued down the centre. I shall also add a little glue to the underside of the top page near the edges so that it will not lift. When I make Wonderwoman’s mother’s card, I will not do this, because the pages on hers will be designed to lift, revealing photos underneath.

So progress is being made, albeit slowly! I have been pretty busy this week with other things, and then too tired in between to do much, but we are already half way through the first week of March, and a lot to do before the beginning of April!

Book-Style Birthday Cards – Rose Construction

I’m making good progress on my two book-style birthday cards, one for Wonderwoman’s mum’s 70th birthday and the other for my mum’s 90th.
When I was cutting all the pieces to make Penny Duncan’s 3D roses, I made a mistake with the numbers of pieces required. I made up the black and gold ones as per instructions, but ended up with fewer than I’d planned, with a few odd pieces left over. I decided that I wouldn’t cut into another piece of the iridescent black cardstock, but would use these leftovers to create a different style of flower. To make things a bit more interesting, I drew designs on them with my embossing pen, and then heat- embossed them in gold. I shall have to make some sort of centres for them.

Here’s a close-up of some of them.

When I came to make the pink roses for my mum’s card, I decided to go with the pieces I had, and not cut more to make up the deficit, but make the roses with one layer less than specified – Penny says you can leave out a layer if you want them smaller and less full. I have cut the pieces from pink cardstock and then inked them with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink, making the piece for the centre of the rose dark, and gradually lightening until the outermost part, which I thought would give a nice dimensional feel to the roses. Here are the pieces, inked and ready for hand-embossing and assembly.

This is a picture of the pieces required to make one rose, hand-embossed and ready for assembly. The two inner pieces are assembled in “cup” form and the two (or three if you are using all the pieces in the cut file) outer pieces in “dome” form. The two inner pieces have a slit between two of the petals into the centre hole. The next piece has a small hole, and the outer piece has no hole. If you are using all the pieces in the file, the extra piece has a large hole and no slit, and is assembled third. Also in the photo, you can see my embossing tool, and the piece of funky foam that I use for hand embossing.

Also included in the file is a leaf piece, but I have not done anything with this yet, because I don’t know how the design of the cards is going to pan out. I can cut and colour them later if necessary.

The following pictures show the assembly of the rose. For full instructions, and video tutorial, please see Penny Duncan’s blog – the address is in my Blog List.
The first picture shows the central part, the first petal of which is rolled around a fine pair of tweezers, and subsequent petals rolled around that, and a dab of hot glue from the glue gun to secure the tip.

The next picture shows this central roll attached with a strip of hot glue along the first petal of the second piece.

These petals are also rolled around, crossing the next one half way behind the previous one each time, to cause the overlapping effect of the petals in the centre of the rose.

It is at this stage that the missing piece would be added – the piece with the large hole and no slit. However, leaving it out, I then proceeded to add the next piece, the one with the small hole. Some hot glue was applied around the hole, and the point of the roll was inserted into the hole, and the petals of this piece pushed upwards to form the first more open part of the rose.

To complete the rose, the same process was repeated, using the final piece, the piece with no hole.

Finally, the underside of the finished rose:

This shows how the final piece, pushed upwards and adhered to the base of the previous piece, forms the base of the flower. If used, the trefoil leaf piece would be glued onto this base.

Here are all the flowers, complete. The final touch was to spray them lightly with a little pink glimmer mist to give a little iridescence to the edges of the petals.

For this card, I am also planning to make some cream roses with edges darkened with distress inks. Thinking about it while making the pink roses, I have decided to make the card itself with cream, rather than white card – I think the pink and cream will give a good, vintage effect. I am also planning to distress the edges of the “book” pages and make the small part of the “cover” brown, like aged leather, possibly with a bit of gold decoration. I may also add some vintage text as a background. Hopefully it will all come together OK!